Sincere thanks to all who helped over the past week or so. Your advice and encouragement helped.

Put all the final pieces in place yesterday, belts, hoses, etc. Filled with old coolant (filtered through 2 layers of an old T-shirt), and oil. Cleaned battery terminals and put the RX-7's Optima battery in it. Cranked it over about 30 sec. with igniton disabled to get oil flowing, reconnected ignition, cranked again, and . . . It sputtered for about 2 to 3 seconds, then ran very slightly roughish for about 5 more seconds, then settled into a soft, amazingly (for a 4-cylinder) smooth purr. Let it warm up fully just idling there with A/C on. It was still up on stands under the front, just in case everything went wrong. After warm up, there were no leaks, so put right front tire on and set her on the ground. 10 mile test drive was a resounding success, so she was put back on "active" status and given her first mission since the head gasket failed - two runs to the county dump to clean out the garage. Well, I have big easy chairs in my house that are not as solid, smooth and stable as the Volvo is at 75 mph now. Guess that kind of sums it up.

Noted shifting problems with AW71 transmission. Will cover them in another post, to follow this one.

As per earlier post, will change coolant and oil/filter this weekend to get out any crud from working on head gasket. Will also order air mass meter to turbocharger intake hose because the one in there is breaking down and won't last much longer.

Thanks again everyone.
--
Scott Cook - 1991 745T, 1985 RX-7 GSL-SE, 1986 Toyota Tercel (Don't laugh, it is reliable, faithful AND gets 41 mpg!)